


the sweetest dream will never do

by Flowerparrish



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: 80's Movies, 80's Music, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - High School, Canon Compliant, Choices, M/M, Mentions of Canon Rape, Mentions of canon violence, Self-Discovery, nothing graphic, this is actually soft i promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-19
Updated: 2021-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-28 01:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30131610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerparrish/pseuds/Flowerparrish
Summary: Neil’s been in worse situations. He knows how to keep his head down, how to figure out what the hell is going on and how to get out of it. Fuck, this could still be nothing more than a super weird dream.He hopes it’s just an unusually vivid dream. Hope hasn’t gotten any less disquieting, and he has little more reason to have faith in it.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Kudos: 58
Collections: AFTG Reverse Big Bang 2021





	the sweetest dream will never do

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art by abramjminyard](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/779361) by abramjminyard. 



> For the AFTG RBB <3 Thank you to my artist, abramjminyard, for the amazing Sixteen Candles based prompt! Art embedded, but check out the tumblr link below to tell the artist how much you love it!

Neil wakes up and notices two things immediately.

One, it’s quiet. There’s no snores from a roommate, not even the quiet breathing of another person asleep. When he strains to listen, there’s no noises that could be from their small kitchen either. No TV on in the living room, audible through the thin dorm room wall. Nothing.

Two, there’s sunlight falling on his face.

_Fuck,_ he thinks immediately, stumbling out of bed before his eyes are even open. He’s going to be so late for practice, why didn’t Matt wake him—

He freezes as his eyes fall open and he’s faced with a pastel-colored room. Too late, he goes back to moments ago when he woke. Bed—too big? Mattress—too soft. Sheets—too… fluffy?

He turns to look at the bed and, no, those are not his sheets that he picked out at the beginning of the school year. They aren’t anything repulsive, just a deep maroon that he doesn’t think he would have picked. But it’s not… bad.

It’s not _bad._ But it’s _wrong._

Where the fuck is he?

As he slowly crosses the room, he catches a glance of himself in the mirror and freezes, terror pooling in his veins. His father’s face stares back at him—younger, yes, but auburn-haired and with ice-blue eyes and—

And Neil no longer cares where the hell is, because this is a much more pressing problem.

It takes him long moments—minutes even?—to realize he’s wearing a soft faded shirt and pastel sleep pants, which… what?

He likes them. He does. They’re comfortable and yet the strangeness of their presence is jarring enough to cut through some of the panic. The worst of it, anyway. But… well. He doesn’t own them, has never owned them, and he must be dreaming but what kind of dream is _this?_

He contemplates sticking around, lingering in this room, but the mirror is here and that’s enough to drive him to flee, moving out of the room and down a stairwell. He makes his way down the stairs two at a time, ignoring photo frames on the walls in fear of what he might see, and passes into a hall that leads to a bright kitchen. The appliances are new and shiny, the countertops marble and unblemished. This place is nicer than any Neil’s stayed at since Baltimore.

More damning, though, is another thing that makes this scene resemble Baltimore; something that makes Neil’s heart drop and his stomach lurch.

His mom is there.

His _mom_ is there.

She looks up at him and smiles, a smile that is not particularly bright or effusive but is nonetheless lacking the severity he’s accustomed to seeing on her face. “Good morning, Neil,” she greets.

She never knew him as Neil.

His body seems to know what to do, though, sliding into a tall chair pushed up against the breakfast counter. She passes him a plate of eggs and toast. There’s even beans on the side, as if in a nod to her heritage.

They never ate toast with beans in Baltimore. That should be enough to help him relax. (It’s not.)

He eats mechanically, waiting in fear. His father never appears, but he can’t help but keep cringing in terror every time he hears a noise.

This is not his childhood home. Neil has never seen this home, but it looks movie-perfect, like all of those films the upperclassmen have convinced him to watch with them. (Well, the normal ones anyway. The ones that seem realistic, even if they’re too perfect and, Neil thinks, too contrived. But then, what does Neil know about normal people and their problems?)

He opens his mouth to ask what’s going on, but what comes out is, “Can I take the car to school?”

“Nice try,” she counters. “Ask again when you have your license.”

Something hurts in his heart, but he can’t figure out what.

He functions on autopilot for the next few hours. He only has one moment of panicked clarity when he undresses to change for the day and sees that his skin is free of any scars. He runs hesitant fingers over his stomach, his shoulder, but he can’t feel anything either.

Logically it’s the least of his problems. He should probably be happy, grateful even.

Honestly, he’s just tired. So he doesn’t pay attention to the clothes he puts on. Everything is brightly colored, and all of the options are equally _wrong_. He doesn’t pay attention to anything he does, either, allowing his body to guide him through the morning: clothes, school, class after class, body moving through the halls with a purpose even if Neil doesn’t know what that purpose _is_. What he does know is that if this is a dream, struggling will only make things worse. If it is not a dream… well, struggling will still probably make things worse.

Neil doesn’t care too much about making things worse, but he has no reason to borrow trouble.

Yet.

He goes to school, high school instead of college. He goes to classes, waves to people in the hallway, and only perks up when he sees the first person he _actually_ recognizes. “Matt!” Neil’s never been so relieved to see one of the Foxes before.

Matt looks up, a little confused. “Hi. What’s up?”

Neil opens his mouth to ask, _what’s going on?_ But then he clocks the genuine confusion in Matt’s expression. “Oh, uh, nothing. Just… weird day.”

Matt nods, but he glances past Neil’s shoulder—not difficult to do with their heights—and says, “Hey, I gotta run. I’ll see you later, okay?”

Neil nods. “Bye,” he replies, but Matt’s already gone.

Okay, so if there was any confusion, that settled it. It’s Matt’s body, Matt’s voice, but it’s not _Matt._ He’s just a character in this strange world Neil’s woken up in, just like Neil’s mom, just like everyone else around him.

Neil’s been in worse situations. He knows how to keep his head down, how to figure out what the hell is going on and how to get out of it. Fuck, this could still be nothing more than a super weird dream.

He hopes it’s just an unusually vivid dream. Hope hasn’t gotten any less disquieting, and he has little more reason to have faith in it. Besides, his nightmares are vivid, yes, but harmless dreams less so. Or, he thinks so? Neil is not actually sure he’s ever had a harmless dream before.

He thinks about that for a minute before deciding it’s probably irrelevant. He’ll wake up or he won’t. Figuring out whether this is a dream probably won’t change his situation much.

In the meantime, though, he goes back to following autopilot. He makes it all the way to lunch, after run-ins with Allison, Aaron, and Seth—and yeah, seeing him alive was a fucking shock. All three of them are mostly friendly, but in an absent way. Impersonal. Still, Seth being alive is one thing; Seth being friendly?

Maybe, Neil thinks, maybe this _is_ a nightmare.

Aaron seems to know Neil the best—for a given definition of “know,” as it seems based on his enthusiasm and topics of conversation that he knows a version of Neil, but certainly not _this_ version of Neil.

He sees the fourth person during lunch, knows this has to be Andrew only because his clothes are different than the ones Aaron was wearing earlier. Neil finds him around the back of a building at the edge of campus, lazily holding a cigarette and smoking.

Andrew is wearing a plaid shirt that’s tucked into jeans, and he looks so fucking different from the real Andrew that Neil can’t help but stare.

“What?” Andrew snaps.

“Andrew,” Neil says, as if his name is enough of an answer.

Maybe it is. Andrew narrows his eyes. “Neil,” he agrees, voice hard. He’s not smiling here. Neil doesn’t know if this is what he should expect when Andrew’s back from Easthaven, but he finds it jarring nonetheless.

He can’t be _real._ He can’t be the Andrew Neil knows. But Neil’s mouth hasn’t been listening to his brain longer than just today, he’s been running his mouth off and speaking his mind for months, and when he opens it to say something that will make Andrew stop looking at him with suspicion, all that comes out is, “What was the last thing I said to you?”

The look in Andrew’s eyes is familiar: grudging interest. “It’ll have to do, won’t it?” he replied. “I said it to Kevin, but it was for you too.”

Neil wilts. “Fuck,” he replies. “You’re real.”

Andrew snorts. “So it would seem.”

Neil sits down on the ground next to Andrew, arms draped loosely across his knees. He looks up at Andrew with a degree of relief he hadn’t expected to feel. Neil is used to being alone, to figuring things out by himself and to surviving by himself. Why should it matter that Andrew is trapped in this strange landscape too?

He looks away when Andrew raises the cigarette to his lips, but not before Andrew says, “Don’t give me that look, junkie.”

Neil almost smiles, but that just reminds him. “They don’t even have exy here.”

Andrew exhales smoke in a slow, steady stream. “How terrible.” His tone is flat and dry, arid like the desert.

Neil shrugs. “Can’t see what the point of this is.”

“There is more to life than exy.”

“Not exy,” Neil says. Andrew doesn’t even look at him, but Neil can feel the skepticism rolling off of him in waves. For someone so expressionless, Andrew’s silences can be expressive when he wants them to be. “All of this. Wherever we are.”

“Don’t really care.”

Neil closes his eyes. Of all the allies to get stuck with, of course he got stuck with the one who doesn’t care why they’ve ended up in a strange place.

But then… he supposes Andrew doesn’t have much to get back to. At least not at this precise moment.

“I can’t look after Kevin if I’m not _there,”_ Neil points out.

Andrew hums, neither agreement nor dissent. But he stubs out his cigarette and, after a moment, offers Neil a hand.

There are no armbands on Andrew’s wrists, but what stands out even more to Neil is that Andrew’s forearms are unblemished. No scars, just like Neil.

He takes Andrew’s hand and allows him to pull Neil to his feet.

“Let’s figure this out.” Andrew sounds put-upon, bored, but that spark of interest is still in his eyes. “Come on.”

-

Wherever they are, they don’t have cell phones. Neil hadn’t really noticed, because he’s never felt comfortable keeping a phone on him. Andrew informs him that there are no computers in the house he woke up in, and that there are also none in the school library.

Unfortunately, that means they only have one real option. They set about talking to people. It doesn’t go very well, because half the people _they_ recognize don’t seem to know them, and also because talking to people is not something either of them particularly enjoys _._

Their breakthrough comes in the form of Aaron. “Hey, Andrew, you’re driving us to the party tonight, right?”

Andrew doesn’t reply. He barely even looks at his twin.

This is par for the course, but Aaron looks surprised by it.

Aaron glances at Neil instead. “Hey, are you coming too?”

He’s acting so much friendlier than the real Aaron has ever been to Neil. In fact, his whole countenance is open and inviting in a way that is frankly disturbing to Neil on multiple levels. He opens his mouth to say, _no,_ and what comes out is, “Sure.”

“I don’t care about parties,” Andrew cuts in. “Drive yourself.”

“But you don’t drink,” Aaron points out. “You _always_ drive me.”

“I’m busy,” Andrew says.

Aaron looks annoyed and holds his ground. “You promised.”

Andrew opens his mouth to say no again. Neil can see it in his disinterested expression and the stubborn line of his jaw… but what comes out is, “Fine. But you’ll owe me.”

“Sure,” Aaron agrees, brightening again. “See you after school. Later, Neil.”

He runs off after a group of cheerleaders, and if Neil didn’t think betting was pointless, he’d bet that Katelyn was one of them. Some things, apparently, are transcend parallel universes or timelines or whatever the hell they’ve gotten themselves into.

A couple of minutes pass with nothing but silence between them. When it’s clear that Andrew isn’t going to say something first, or even just resume questioning other people with an intimidating glare on his face, Neil speaks up.

“You didn’t mean to say that,” Neil points out. It’s an offering—his way of telling Andrew that he noticed, but waiting to see if Andrew is willing to offer more.

“No,” Andrew agrees shortly. He’s quiet, brooding, and it looks out of place not because Neil’s used to his meds-induced mania—he’s seen sober Andrew a handful of times, after all—but because he looks like a popular, high school aged version of himself. The juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar is, for the thousandth time today, jarring. “You?”

“A few times.” Neil frowns. “My mother is here. But it’s not her. Not really. When we talked, I kept saying things that sound normal instead of what I intend.”

Andrew nods. Neil’s relieved, because of all the new expressions—micro though they may be—that he’s been getting from Andrew today, he couldn’t have handled pity.

But whatever version of Andrew this is, when he’s not on or withdrawing from meds, he still doesn’t have the capacity for pity. Instead, there is something like understanding in his eyes. Just for a moment, and then they’re back to blank. 

“Maybe we just have to let it play out.”

Neil frowns. There has to be something they can do. There _has_ to be.

If he was introspective, he might think about how so much of his life has been out of his control, and how now he’s uncomfortable giving up control once more. The past few months, after all, have been him making his own choices for once.

It’s gone terribly, but he’s not dead yet—unless this is some kind of purgatory?—so it’s going better than expected.

He’s not introspective, though, so instead he says, “Fuck that.”

Andrew rolls his eyes. The bell rings. “Good luck with that. I’ll see you at the party.” His voice doesn’t change, but somehow Neil can feel how derisive the words come out.

Neil doesn’t want to let Andrew go. But it seems that his body doesn’t care, because it’s already moving in the direction of the main building.

Andrew gives him a mocking salute when he glances back, as if to say, _exactly my point._

-

Neil gets through the day, and then he gets home and does homework and listens to music. He doesn’t know much about modern pop music, but this doesn’t sound quite right. It’s the station the radio is tuned to, though, so he lets it play.

Just before seven, a car pulls up outside and honks. Neil tells his mom that he’ll see her later, and he heads outside before pausing on the front step.

Andrew is in the driver’s seat of a minivan. Neil takes a moment to savor the image, because it’s so ridiculous and must be annoying Andrew to no end.

Neil climbs in the back of the van and settles into the seat, listening to the songs on the radio. They sound different, almost… familiar?

He doesn’t really care, though, so instead he just says hi to Aaron and listens to the lighter version of Aaron’s twin talk about things Neil has no interest in, people Neil doesn’t know.

When they pull up in front of an unfamiliar house, the lights are on out front and music is pouring out of the windows and the open front door. It is definitely too early in the spring for that not to be wasteful—they have to have the heater running—but then, from the size of the house, maybe bills like that don’t matter to whoever the house belongs to.

They park down the block and walk up to the front. Aaron moves ahead after getting only monosyllabic answers from Neil (and less than that from Andrew) on the car ride, clearly done with their reticence. “Are you fighting?” he asks before he vanishes, and Andrew doesn’t respond. Neil just shrugs. Aaron rolls his eyes, looking almost like Andrew for just a moment. “Ugh, whatever, I don’t care.”

When he disappears, the quiet left in his wake is a blissful relief.

Neil doesn’t want to go into the house where the party is happening at all. But his feet keep carrying him forward, and so do Andrew’s, so in they go.

Neil loses track of things after a while. Neil doesn’t drink, but this body doesn’t seem to know that. Seth, who apparently is not only alive here but also really doesn’t hate Neil and in fact seems to like him, ropes him into a game of beer pong. Neil tries to say no, but it comes out a yes, and when he looks to Andrew for help the asshole just smirks at him and makes a “go on” gesture.

Neil’s great at it after the first couple of tosses—his reflexes have absolutely carried over—but this is unfortunately a team game, and Seth’s either terrible or too drunk for any innate skill to remain. By the end of the game, an hour has passed and Neil is drunker than he’s ever been while uninjured.

He hates this. He looks around and can’t find Andrew, so he makes his way outside toward the back of the house. He finds Andrew anyway, leaning against the railing of the back porch. Andrew is not alone—there are plenty of people out here—but he is off in a corner by himself, smoking once more.

Neil makes his way over and goes to lean against the house near Andrew but overshoots and ends up slumped against him instead. “Fuck,” he mumbles. “ ‘M so drunk.”

“Apparently.”

Neil tries to right himself, but it doesn’t quite work. “Hate this.”

“If you throw up on me, I’ll stab you.”

“No knives,” Neil points out, through it comes out a little slurred.

“Kitchen’s through there,” Andrew says, and Neil feels him move like he must have gestured.

Neil laughs. “Missed you,” he says, and then he freezes because he did _not_ mean to say that.

He _has,_ though. Andrew’s the only person who is as much of a wreck as Neil most days. Okay, well, Kevin’s a disaster, but somehow life didn’t make him hard. Not like Andrew. Not like Neil.

Neil’s automatically the most damaged person in any room, and while that’s probably still true when Andrew’s around, it’s not as damning when he can share the title with someone. He used to be the most dangerous person too, and between the two of them he doesn’t honestly know who would win in a fight.

Neil doesn’t like fighting with knives but that doesn’t mean he _can’t,_ and they both fight dirty, fight to survive.

But it’s not just that. Not just that when everyone is busy calling Andrew a monster, they’re less likely to notice all the strange things Neil says and does. Or all the normal things he doesn’t do and say.

No, it’s the current of understanding that runs between them. Neil’s tired of well-meaning people who just do not, will not ever, _get it._

“You’re drunk,” Andrew says after a few minutes. It brings Neil’s mind back from wandering.

“Yeah,” he agrees. He doesn’t know if he’s trying to make an excuse, though, or just saying it because it’s true.

Andrew shoves him away. Neil only realizes as he stumbles back that Andrew really had let him lean for that long in the first places, for minutes on end. “Go throw up in a toilet. I’ll find Aaron and drive you home.”

“Okay,” Neil agrees. It is a good idea, after all.

-

Neil wakes up the next morning with a pounding headache and resolves to never drink again.

It would be more bearable, he thinks, if he had _chosen_ to drink. Instead, his stupid, fake teenage body had forced him into it, and now he feels awful.

Not so awful that he can’t go about his day like nothing’s wrong. It would take much more than a hangover to keep him down. But it puts him too much in the mind frame of post-Columbia for comfort.

Andrew drives up to pick him up for school, and Neil climbs silently into the backseat. He’s sullen and angry at Andrew for something he’d almost forgiven, and he doesn’t want to talk.

Andrew doesn’t try to make him talk.

It soothes some of the rage simmering under Neil’s skin.

He leans his forehead against the cool window of the car, letting his mind wander as Aaron talks to Andrew, having given up on talking to Neil when he failed to respond.

Neil hates this place, and he hates everything and (almost) everyone in it. But the cool glass on his forehead makes it a little less awful for a bit, and that’s more than Neil could have asked for.

-

School that day is terrible. Neil can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. He drinks enough water that the hangover goes away, but every time people talk to him, something prickles under his skin like anger, discontentment, _hurt._

“We have to get out of here,” he tells Andrew at lunch.

“We will.” Andrew sounds certain. Neil waits for his brilliant plan, but nothing is forthcoming.

“How?”

Andrew shrugs. “I don’t know. But I’m not spending the rest of my life dressed like this.”

He’s wearing a white t-shirt today, and it’s less jarring but still a far cry from the all black outfits Neil is used to seeing him in. Neil sighs and plucks the cigarette from Andrew, holding it up so he can breathe in the smoke.

Andrew glares but digs the pack out of his pocket and lights another.

They stay quiet until the bell rings to signal the end of their lunch hour. Neil is loathe to move when the sound rings out across campus; this is the only time all day Neil has felt like he belongs in his skin.

He follows Andrew back toward the main buildings anyway. Best to get it over with.

-

At the end of the day, Aaron’s busy talking to people when Neil passes him in the halls. He takes the opportunity to steal the front seat of Andrew’s car, slumping down and closing his eyes.

“Is this what you look like?”

Neil cracks his eyes open just enough to peek at Andrew. Andrew isn’t even looking at him, just tapping his fingers against the steering wheel in a steady beat and staring out of the windshield. “Younger, but yeah. More or less.”

“Why?”

Neil hums. He can’t remember where they’re at in the truth game, can’t remember whose turn it is.

In the end, he answers and figures that if necessary, Andrew can owe him one. “I look like my father.”

Aaron taps on the window, looking annoyed, and Neil flips him off. Aaron climbs into the backseat and says, “Andrew! You let him take my seat?”

“Yes.”

Aaron huffs and mutters something Neil doesn’t catch. Andrew’s eye twitches, but he says nothing.

The rest of the drive is quiet. Neil’s glad when they drop him off. He goes up to his room and shrugs on a hoodie, feeling comfortable with the shapelessness of it. He curls up on the pastel bed in the brightly colored room and closes his eyes, tucking a pillow over his head to block out the daylight so he can try to sleep.

-

He's woken, an unknown number of hours later, by a tapping on his window. While they’re apparently in a movie, or something like it, and this seems like the start to a horror film (at least, based on what the upperclassmen have said), Neil’s never had a healthy sense of self-preservation. Not when he’s too curious who the fuck is tapping on his window when he’s on the second floor.

He rolls out of bed and moves over to the window, peering out.

Andrew. Why he even wondered he’s not sure, when the answer is so obvious in retrospect.

Neil shoves the window open and just looks at him, baffled not so much because he’s tired or surprised as because Andrew looks almost _normal,_ except for how he’s got a white box in his hands.

“What’s—” Neil starts, but Andrew just huffs and shoves past him, clambering inside.

“I figured it out,” he says. “Here.”

He shoves the box at Neil, who tentatively opens it and sees… cake? “I don’t like sweets,” he says automatically.

The look Andrew levels him clearly communicates his exasperated, _yes, I know._

“Thank you?” Neil tries again.

“Happy Birthday.”

Neil freezes for a moment, because _no one_ knows his birthday. Well, Kevin might, but Neil’s not going to ask.

But then he realizes it’s not January, so he relaxes. “What?”

Andrew’s eyes are intent on Neil’s face, narrowed just enough to show that he’s still trying to puzzle out Neil’s reactions. _Good luck,_ Neil thinks. Andrew may be determined to solve whatever puzzle he thinks Neil provides, but Neil’s pretty sure that it’s missing a few key pieces.

“It’s Neil Josten’s birthday,” Andrew tells him.

Oh. Neil glances at a calendar across the room, but it’s not like he’s been paying attention in school. He honestly doesn’t even know what day it is. “Okay,” Neil says, but it comes out almost like a question.

“Eat the cake.”

They sit on the bed and eat cake—Neil has only a slice, and Andrew eats so much that Neil begins to wince with every bite he watches Andrew consume—and they don’t talk, not really, but the silence is comfortable.

“Think we’ll wake up back in the real world tomorrow?” Neil asks.

Andrew shrugs. It seems less noncommittal and more ambivalent. “I suppose.”

Andrew leaves not long after. Neil hesitates, tempted to ask him to stay. He’s already figured out that Andrew makes him feel… not _safe,_ but safer, maybe. Grounded.

He knows better than to ask, though. As Andrew leaves, back out the window even though Neil insists he could use the door—it’s not like he cares what this fake version of his mom thinks—Neil says, “Hey. Thanks.”

Andrew holds his gaze for a long moment. He nods, and then a moment later he’s vanished into the night.

-

Neil struggles to fall back asleep. He thinks maybe it’s because he slept so long earlier in the day—honestly, he’s been sleeping longer here than he usually would, but also more deeply, dreamlessly.

He tries to think what the significance of the birthday is. If it was about it being his birthday, shouldn’t it have _been_ his birthday?

But it wasn’t. It was his fake birthday, so… what did that mean?

There must be a reason that it was Neil’s birthday, rather than Nathaniel’s. After all, they’ve been dropped in an alternate universe or fake world for no real reason.

He drifts off to sleep still uncertain.

He wakes up, in the morning, still in the plush bed in a pastel bedroom and feels a sinking feeling in his chest.

Shit.

He should’ve known better. When has anything in Neil’s life ever been that easy?

-

Andrew finds Neil at his locker and drags him away from class. Neil goes, easily, and Andrew releases his grip on Neil’s arm as soon as he realizes Neil doesn’t care to resist. Why would he, though? It’s not like this matters. Getting out of here is what matters.

They go to their spot behind the school buildings where Andrew likes to smoke. Andrew shakes out and lights two cigarettes, handing one to Neil without comment.

“It didn’t work,” Neil says eventually. He’s doing it more to provoke a response from Andrew than because he thinks it needs to be said. He’s nothing if not an instigator, after all. The meek façade he meant to put on as Neil Josten hadn’t lasted more than a couple of weeks. Whoever he is now, he’s some blend of lies and whatever truth is hiding beneath his many other lies, untouched and having rarely had an opportunity to the light.

“No,” Andrew agrees. He stabs out his cigarette, barely smoked, just to cast it aside and light another. “It didn’t.”

“Why not?” Neil presses.

“I know you’re not used to using it, but you do have a brain.”

Neil smiles a bit. “You sure about that?”

The look Andrew gives him is icy and unamused. Neil laughs.

“It wasn’t my real birthday,” he says finally, after they’ve both brooded in silence for a few more lengthy minutes of quiet. “So if that’s the key, then…” Neil trails off, uncertain. Andrew’s right, he has a brain; he’s good at math, he’s good at languages. What he lacks is sense. Unfortunately, it seems like right now he might need more of the latter.

Andrew hums. “Why do you want to go back?”

“What?”

He glances at Neil, gaze flat, but Neil can sense the current of emotions underneath his blank exterior. “No one’s trying to kill you here.”

Neil thinks about saying, _there’s no exy here._ It’s not the truth—well, not the whole truth, although living in a world without exy doesn’t sound particularly _appealing—_ but it would rile Andrew up, and Neil can’t help but want to push his buttons as much as possible.

“Well, you’re here too,” Neil points out, instead of answering. He doesn’t owe Andrew a truth right now.

Andrew nods. He inhales, holds, exhales smoke into the air between them. His gaze doesn’t break from Neil’s, but it doesn’t give anything away, either.

“So if I stay here, you’re stuck too, aren’t you?”

Andrew shrugs. “Seems like it.”

Andrew _does_ owe him a truth. Is Neil going to spend it on this?

Yes. Because now that he’s thought of the question, he needs to know. “Why don’t you want to go back?”

Andrew smiles, something dark and dangerous. “Maybe it’s not just safer here for you.”

It’s not a clear answer, but it is an answer. Enough of one that Neil feels his blood run cold, not with fear but with a quiet rage. He’s always gotten angry like his father, heat and passion and no room for rational thought. But this rage is like his mother’s, deadly and calculated and calm.

“Who?”

Andrew holds his gaze and asks again, “Why do you want to go back?”

“Because I’m done being a rabbit,” Neil tells him. “Don’t you remember telling me to stop running?”

Andrew scoffs. “Like you always listen to me.”

Neil feels part of him relax at Andrew’s jibe, something so normal between them. But he hasn’t forgotten. He’s answered Andrew’s question, a truth for a truth. “Who?”

“A doctor at the facility.”

It’s enough of an answer. When they get back, Neil can fix it. He isn’t sure how, but the cold certainty in his veins doesn’t allow for him to fail.

“We can’t stay.” It’s a fact, for Neil. He doesn’t want this sanitized world, boring and plain and so much like years and years of lying and running.

“Alright,” Andrew agrees. He doesn’t say anything more, but Neil hears the unspoken agreement that he’s not in this alone. Andrew doesn’t want to leave, but he doesn’t want to stay either. He’ll help Neil figure out how to get home.

-

They start sharing all the things they’ve noticed. Neil’s weird compulsions seem to have ended with his birthday reveal—Andrew must have been on the right track, because Neil hasn’t gotten any unexplainable moods today.

Andrew doesn’t seem to enjoy sharing, but he does. He talks about Aaron, and how they still live with Nicky. He looks at Neil and says, “Every time I look at you a pop song plays in my head, and I might murder you just to get it to stop.”

Neil hums thoughtfully. “I wonder if murdering me would send me home?”

“Doesn’t matter to me either way.”

It takes until evening falls, school long ended but the two of them still hanging out in the same spot, stomachs growling and going ignored. “Everything feels _more,”_ Andrew tells him.

“More how?”

“Raw. Painful.”

Neil can’t fathom why Andrew would want to stay here when he feels like that. He also can’t imagine how Andrew can keep his expression so blank if he’s in pain all the time. But then, he’s fairly sure he can do the same, so why he would expect any less from Andrew he doesn’t know.

“What if it’s got something to do with you, too?” Neil asks.

Andrew doesn’t ask a question, just tilts his head a little as if to say, _go on._

“Well, you’re here, right? Can’t just be because you know about these movies. It could be almost anyone if that was all that was needed. Maybe you’re a part of it, too.”

Andrew frowns. “What do you think?” He asks it plainly, sounding bored, but the fact that he gives Neil an opening says a lot about either trust or desperation.

Neil decides not to try to figure out which one it is. “Is safety the only reason you want to stay here?” He doesn’t add that _here_ could become unsafe at any point; life is unpredictable, and they’ve already seen that the plot of this world doesn’t necessarily play out the way they expect.

He doesn’t _need_ to say any of that, because Andrew knows. “No.”

“So?” Neil presses.

“People are less awful,” Andrew says. “Except you.”

“Except me,” Neil agrees. “Okay.” He thinks about that—about the way Aaron smiles at Andrew and treats him like a sibling for real. He hasn’t seen how Nicky interacts, but it makes him curious.

He thinks about the way everything is lighter, about his “mother” and her levity that she never once carried in the real world, not even when they lived in Baltimore. (Especially not when they lived in Baltimore.)

“So maybe it’s about that. People.”

“I already knew people were terrible.”

Neil sighs. “Maybe this is showing you that people can be less terrible.”

“They aren’t.”

Neil isn’t in the mood to argue with Andrew’s flat denial. It’s not like he _disagrees,_ anyway. It’s just the only “lesson” he can think of.

“So mine is about my fake birthday and yours is about people being less terrible in a fake world. Great.”

Andrew blows smoke in his face. “We might be stuck here for a while.”

Neil sighs. “Yeah,” he agrees, and tries to pretend his stomach doesn’t sink at the thought.

-

Neil’s mom doesn’t even bring up that he skipped school.

He doesn’t know what to make of that. He eats a sandwich and goes to bed, wakes up in the morning, and skips school with Andrew again.

They go to a mall. It makes Neil think of the last time they were in a mall and how far they’ve already come. He’s not any more at ease, but he trusts Andrew enough to move past that and follow him from store to store.

In the end, they settle in a back corner of the food court. Andrew has a pile of greasy food around him, and Neil has a salad.

“What’s Nicky like?”

“Happy.”

Neil frowns. “Isn’t he always?”

“No.”

Neil waits, but nothing else is forthcoming. Neil shrugs and takes a bite of his salad.

“What do you think for me?”

“I think you already did it.”

“The cake didn’t work.”

“No,” Andrew agrees, sounding annoyed. “It was about choosing who you’re going to be. The cake was a symbol.”

“I didn’t choose anything.”

Andrew glares at him. “You chose to be Neil Josten. You chose not to run.”

That… makes a strange amount of sense. “Oh.”

He wonders, then, if Andrew knows what he needs to do to get free from this place. If he’s resisting; if it’s hard.

If Neil had needed to choose not to run a few months ago, it would have been much more difficult. It’s easier, now, because he’s been choosing this every day for months.

But then, maybe it _is_ more than that.

Why the birthday?

He realizes, all at once, why.

He needed to choose who he’s going to be. He’s Neil Josten—he’s not Nathaniel, and he’s not Alex or Chris or Stefan. Whoever this version of him is, whatever Neil Josten has become against his best intentions… _that’s_ his truth.

“Oh,” he says again. Andrew rolls his eyes. “So what do you have to do?”

“Choose.”

Neil sighs. “Whatever.”

They find an arcade and spend the rest of the day spending quarters on games Neil doesn’t understand. It’s… tentatively fun, though. He’s competitive enough to get invested, and Andrew plays to win (unlike with exy). Whether it’s just to annoy Neil or because he actually cares, Neil doesn’t know, but the challenge is welcome.

At the end of the day, when Andrew drops Neil off at “his” house, he parks the car and follows Neil inside.

Neil shrugs and lets Andrew follow him up to his room.

“I’m staying,” Andrew says, and Neil blinks.

“There are easier ways to kill me than in my sleep.”

“I’m going to look you in the eye when I kill you,” Andrew says. It’s reassuring, in a twisted way. “Anything else would be unsatisfying.”

So they climb into bed, both in Neil’s pajamas. Andrew looks disturbing in pastel colors, but he also looks softer than Neil thought possible.

There are only a few inches of space between them in the bed, but it might as well be miles. Neither of them is going to cross it; neither of them has any desire to.

“We’ll wake up back in the real world tomorrow,” Andrew tells him. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I only do stupid things,” Neil tells him.

“Don’t do anything stupid for me, then.”

Neil takes a page out of Andrew’s book and hums, refusing to respond with empty promises.

He falls asleep to Andrew’s glare, unimpressed with Neil’s reticence.

-

He wakes up to his alarm in Fox Tower and takes a few moments to breathe deeply in relief.

It doesn’t last. He can’t help but think about Andrew, unsafe in a way that is so much more immediate than Neil’s own danger.

He’s glad he didn’t make any promises. He wouldn’t have been able to keep them, and if Neil knows anything about Andrew, it’s that he hates nothing more than a broken promise.

-

The banquet is a disaster. It’s also a relief. Neil’s cards are on the table, and all he has to do is survive hell to keep Andrew safe.

The nest is terrible. But Neil has memories of a world that wasn’t reality to help him recognize how fake this construct of a place is. He has memories of Andrew in plaid with his sleeves rolled up, of sharing cigarettes and playing arcade games at the mall.

None of that was real, and none of this is real.

All that matters is that Neil knows who he is, he made his choice, and it’s so easy to hold on to that in the face of this because he’s done it, actively, every day up to this point.

He’s destroyed by the time he ends up on Wymack’s bathroom floor, staring into the mirror at the tattoo on his face and wondering how it got there. He’s looking at auburn hair and blue eyes and they’re nowhere near as startling as they would have been without the interlude in a fantasy world where Andrew was the only thing real.

Wymack tells him Andrew’s coming home and that fact alone is enough to keep Neil sane, to keep him away from the kitchen knives that he wants to use to carve this mark off of his face.

Andrew will have knives, after all. He’s always threatening to kill Neil; carving a tattoo off of his face is hardly anything to ask in the face of that.

When they pick Andrew up, he’s blank and empty. It’s not the same emptiness as Neil saw on him in whatever dream-like space they’d been trapped in. This goes deeper; it’s not covering a well of powerful emotions, it’s stifling them.

The others are afraid of Andrew, that much is clear. But when Andrew’s gaze lights on Neil, and his bandages, his lips twitch up in the ghost of a smirk. The flicker of interest in his eyes is so brief that Neil could have simply imagined it, but he doesn’t think so.

Andrew plays music loud enough that Neil wants to cry from the way his head aches.

Despite that, it’s a relief. It feels like _home._

-

“There’s a difference between not running and suicide.” It’s the first thing Andrew says to Neil when he makes his way to the roof. He’s standing at the edge, too close for safety, toes peeking over the ledge. Neil goes and sits down next to him, settling carefully with his sore body.

“Is there?” Neil asks. It’s a little sharper than he means for it to come out; pain brings out the edge in him. It’s not a surprise, but he sighs anyway. “You?”

Andrew shrugs. “Me.”

It’s enough of an answer to the question Neil didn’t ask. Was his effort worth anything in the end?

Maybe. Not enough, but something is more than nothing.

Neil has spent his life clawing for any bit of survival, of safety, he can get. Anything is better than nothing, in the end.

“What song did you hear?” Neil asks, instead of pressing the issue.

“Aerosmith,” Andrew says like it’s a curse word. It means nothing to Neil, but he commits it to memory so he can look it up later. “You aren’t supposed to still be…” he gestures vaguely at Neil.

“Here?” Neil asks.

“Like that.”

Neil tries to figure out what Andrew might mean. He could take it at face value, that he’s not supposed to be the same as Andrew perceived him before through the haze of his drugs. But that doesn’t seem right.

No, he thinks it’s much more likely that Andrew is saying he shouldn’t be the way he was in the strange, happy, fake world.

“What was I like there?” he asks. It’s oblique, better than asking what Andrew sees when he looks at Neil _now._

He might as well have asked that question, though, going by the slanted look Andrew directs at him. “A pipe dream.”

Neil bites back his first response— _I’m not a hallucination—_ because there’s clearly more to what Andrew’s saying than appears on the surface. “I was the only real thing there.”

“And yet.”

And yet.

They don’t say much more that night. Neil goes in when his fingertips go numb, not wanting to damage his hands when he’s already going to be off the court for longer than he would like due to his other injuries.

Andrew scoffs like he knows what Neil’s thinking, but he stubs out his cigarette and tosses it away, following Neil back inside.

-

They don’t really talk about it after that.

It doesn’t seem relevant. Neil wonders what realization Andrew came to that got them out, but in the end, that’s Andrew’s truth and it is not one Neil feels he needs to bargain for.

He gets taken on his birthday, on Neil Josten’s birthday, and suddenly it feels a lot more relevant and a lot more ironic.

As he deals with his father, feeling the same terror he felt on that first day in the fake world as he waited for his father to appear.

The world is darker here, yes. Neil chose the unsafe path. He _chose_ the world where his father was alive and his mother wasn’t, and he has to live with that choice.

It would be easy to regret that choice. Andrew wanted to stay. Neil could have stayed.

He didn’t. And now he’s going to die.

But he has Andrew’s voice echoing in his ears, _this is the moment when you stopped being a rabbit,_ and he thinks, _at least I’m dying as Neil Josten._

He never gives in to the urge to allow himself to revert to Nathaniel, because these days Nathaniel is as much of a lie as Alex, as Chris, as Stefan.

Neil Josten is going to die in a basement in Baltimore at the hands of a man who is his father in nothing but blood, carved apart slowly and in unending agony.

But Neil Josten is going to die as Neil Josten, and that was _his_ choice in the end. It was the only choice he had at his disposal, but it’s _his._

-

He doesn’t die.

-

When Neil and Andrew are laying on adjacent cots in an FBI questioning room, Neil’s brain numb and exhausted, his body alternating between numb from pain medication and in pain despite that, he finally decides that it’s relevant.

“What was it?”

Andrew rolls to look at him. Well, to look directly at him. Neil is certain Andrew was watching him out of the corner of his eye before he spoke.

“Accepting change,” Andrew says. He’s quiet for long enough that Neil thinks that’s it. If it is, that’s fine; it’s enough of an answer.

Neil’s never had the luxury of fearing change; change had been all he knew for half of his life. But he knows how good it has felt to settle; how it feels to be willing to risk everything to have something that he can call _his._

He thinks about Andrew. About claiming things but being unwilling to be flexible enough to keep them. About how he’s been going to therapy with Aaron. About secret kisses, about “yes or no” and trust instead of coordinates.

So when Andrew follows that up with, “Taking risks,” Neil understands.

Andrew’s risks look different than Neil’s, but they are not any less difficult or impressive. More, even, Neil thinks. Risking your life when survival is all but impossible anyway is one thing. Risking trust when your whole life has proved that trust is a luxury that will always hurt you in the end… Well.

Neil reaches out, holding a hand palm up, curled slightly less because of the wrappings around his fingers and more because of the pain.

Andrew stares at the offered hand for a handful of heartbeats before he reaches out and takes it. He doesn’t hold it so gently that it doesn’t hurt. But he holds it carefully nonetheless. More importantly, he holds it like he’s never going to let go.

“Did it help?” Neil asks.

Andrew’s eyes are dark when he stares at Neil. Neil isn’t sure if he’s refusing to answer because he doesn’t want to, or if he hasn’t yet figured out what he wants to say.

The silence between them lasts long enough that Neil’s eyes fall closed, his breaths evening out as sleep begins to drag him under.

Just before he’s completely asleep, though, he hears a whisper in the air between them. “Yes.”

Neil falls asleep with the beginning of a smile curved against his lips.

-

The team vacation feels unreal in the same way that the dream did. Everyone are themselves, but the world is so much kinder than he’s ever had any experience with.

The only thing that makes Neil believe it’s real is the pain. It feels twisted to be grateful for his injuries, but he is. He catches Andrew feeling for his arm bands and knives a couple of times, and he knows he’s not the only one.

The interlude in a dream world was terrible, and wonderful, and necessary. But they chose reality just like they chose each other, even if one of those things took them—took _him—_ longer to figure out. He’ll take reality, pain and all, if it means keeping this.

When he and Andrew fall asleep, curled up close in a too-big bed, Neil doesn’t say _I love you._ He doesn’t need to. He holds Andrew’s hand in the sliver of space between their bodies and doesn’t let go. This is better anyway; silence, actions, are their language.

Neil plans to show Andrew every moment of every day that this is his choice.

The End


End file.
